Fluid and particulate transport processes underlie a huge variety of applications spanning industrial, biomedical, and environmental problems. At the University of Vermont, we have research spanning a wide range of fluid transport interests, such as plasma physics of aircraft atmospheric reentry, biomedical processes involving blood and synovial flow, bacterial growth and mitigation processes, snow pack monitoring and melt modeling, groundwater flows and how they are impacted by thermal energy storage and hydraulic fracking, nanoparticle synthesis and interaction in magnetic fields, just to name a few. Our faculty working in this area encompasses experts from a variety of backgrounds, including Mechanical Engineering, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Electrical & Biomedical Engineering, and Mathematics & Statistics.

Transport processes impact nearly every natural system and field of human endeavor. We invite you to join us in advancing our understanding of the foundational mechanics of fluid and particulate transport and how they underpin important applications.

Core Faculty

Arne Bomblies, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Dr. Bomblies works at the intersection of climate and society and seeks to understand how a changing climate will affect human and natural systems. Specifically, his research spans climatic and hydrologic impacts on malaria transmission, the impacts of changing extreme climatic events, and climate-to-flood mechanistic linkages. This involves fieldwork in places such as Niger, Ethiopia, and Madagascar for the malaria work, as well as climate and hydrological modeling with an emphasis on extreme events in the northeastern US.
Faculty Profile

Yves Dubief, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Dubief has been developing and collaborating research programs in turbulence control by complex fluids, flow-surface interactions with application to erosion and ablation by turbulent flows, biophysics of blood coagulation under flow and lubrication in articular joints. Dr. Dubief is a fellow of the Vermont Advanced Computing Center. He contributes to the teaching of fluid-related and computing-related undergraduate and graduate courses.

Faculty Profile

Douglas Fletcher, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Fletcher is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Vermont with a secondary appointment in Materials Science. In 2009, Dr. Fletcher and his graduate students completed the construction of the UVM 30 kW Inductively Coupled Plasma Torch Facility that integrated optical diagnostics with the plasma test chamber.  This facility has been used to screen a wide variety of candidate thermal protection materials, from solid ceramics to woven fibers.
Faculty Profile

Jeffrey Marshall, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Marshall is a Professor and Associate Dean of Research in CEMS at the University of Vermont. He performed research in fluid mechanics and particulate flows, with a focus on vortex flows and adhesive particulate flows. His recent projects involve nanoparticle diffusion, biofilm simulation, renewable energy systems, turbulent particle agglomeration, obscurent cloud dynamics, particle transport in gas turbine engines, and cold-regions sensor systems.

Faculty Profile, Faculty Website

George Pinder, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Dr. Pinder has mentored hundreds of students and authored or co-authored more than 250 papers and 16 book chapters. He was the founding editor of Advances in Water Resources and Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations and has received numerous prestigious recognitions including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Environmental and Water Resources in 2016. He was elected Member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2010.
Faculty Profile, Faculty Website

Donna Rizzo, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Dr. Rizzo's research focuses on the development of new computational tools to improve the understanding of human-induced changes on natural systems and the way we make decisions about natural resources. Since joining UVM in fall 2002, she has worked on a number of computational approaches to multi-scale environmental problems.


Faculty Profile, Faculty Website


Affiliated Research

Amber Doiron, Electrical & Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Doiron's research focuses on the development of nanoparticles for use in drug delivery and as contrast agents in magnetic resonance imaging in addition to studying toxicity mechanisms of nanoparticles. Applications of her work focus on detection and treatment of atherosclerosis, biofilm infections, cancer, and corneal keratitis.


Faculty Profile

Appala Raju Badireddy, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Dr. Badireddy conducts interdisciplinary research on: (1) sustainable membrane processes with the focus on water & wastewater treatment, and resource recovery, (2) environmental nanotechnology with the focus on applications and implications of engineered nanomaterials, and (3) nanometrology with the focus on developing enhanced darkfield-hyperspectral imaging (ED-HSI) microscopy methods for detection and quantification of engineered nanomaterials and co-contaminants in environmental and biological matrices.
Faculty Profile, Faculty Website

Jianke Yang, Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. Yang is the Williams Professor of Mathematics, University Distinguished Professor, University Scholar and Chairperson in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Vermont. Dr. Yang's research focuses on nonlinear waves (nonlinear PDEs) and their physical applications. This research has direct applications to fiber telecommunication systems, nonlinear optics and oceanography. 

Faculty Profile, Faculty Website

Jun Yu, Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. Yu's research is in applied mathematics involving mathematical modeling and analysis of practical applications governed by differential equations. In particular, asymptotic and numerical analyses of dynamics in combustion models with diffusion partial differential equations are recently carried out. The techniques developed in these studies are useful for transport processes in general.

 

Affiliated Centers

    
Vermont Advanced Computing Core


Selected Courses in Transport Processes and Particulates

ME 233 Vortex Flows

General theorems of vorticity transport in fluids; methods for solution of vortex flows; application to wake vortices, turbulent wall-layer vortices, wing-tip vortices, intake vortices, vortex-structure interaction, vortex reconnection, vortex breakdown, tornadoes and hurricanes.

ME 237 Turbulence

Description of turbulent flows; statistical and modeling of turbulent flows; Navier Stokes as a dynamical system; experimental and numerical approaches.

ME 239 Rocket Propulsion

Flight mechanics and propulsion requirements for atmospheric and space flight. Thermochemistry of fuels and propellants. Operating principles of chemical, electrical and nuclear propulsion systems.

ME 240 Compressible Flow

Theory of compressible flow. Normal and oblique shocks; expansion waves; unsteady wave motion; method of characteristics; linearized external flows; conical and 3D flows.

ME 242 Advanced Engineering Thermodynamics

Foundations of statistical mechanics. Gases and crystals. Chemical equilibrium. Irreversible processes.

ME 243 Incompressible Flow

Intermediate treatment of incompressible fluid flow; Navier- Stokes equations; two-dimensional potential flows; wing theory; vorticity and vortex structures; laminar and turbulent boundary layers.

ME 245 Advanced Heat Transfer I

Analytical methods for multidimensional steady and transient heat conduction; phase change and moving boundaries. Thermal radiation exchange in enclosures; view factors; emitting/absorbing gases.

ME 249 Computational Fluids Engineering

Project-based. Computational methods for solving the Navier-Stokes equations and combined thermo-fluid flows; finite- differences and finite-volume techniques; use of standard commercial CFD software.

ME 250 Air Breathing Propulsion

Presents a study on air-breathing propulsion systems. Initial focus will be on various types of engine systems, real and ideal parametric cycle analysis, and individual internal component performance. Will then move to contemporary propulsion topics and research that push aerospace systems to new flight envelopes.

ME 343 Advanced Fluid Dynamics

Stress in continuum; kinematics, dynamics; potential fields; Wing theory; Navier-Stokes equation; hydrodynamic stability; turbulence; laminar, turbulent boundary layer theory; transient flows; free laminar, turbulent flows; mixing.

ME 344. Advanced Eng Thermodynamics II

Microscopic thermodynamics; Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, Fermi-Dirac statistics; kinetic theory of gases; transport properties, compressed gases, liquids, solid states; chemical systems; irreversible processes; fluctuations.

ME 346 Advanced Gas Dynamics

Transonic flows; hypersonic flows and shock relations; boundary layer interactions; high-temperature gases and aerothermodynamics; rarefied flows; computational methods.

ME 350 Multiscale Modeling

Computational modeling of the physics and dynamical behavior of matter composed of diverse length and time scales. Molecular simulation. Coarse-graining. Coupled atomistic/continuum methods.

CE 253 Transportation & Air Quality

Air pollution sources, measurement methods, legislation, vehicle emissions formation, control and transport processes. Emphasis on emission factor and dispersion multi-scale modeling using latest modeling tools.

CE 260 Hydrology

Theory of precipitation, run-off, infiltration, and ground water; precipitation and run-off data; and application of data for use in development of water resources.

CE 262 Advanced Hydrology

Introduces computer modeling of hydrological systems. Project-based. Simple overland flow, flood routing, water quality, and groundwater models are developed using finite difference techniques. Stochastic hydrology and hydrologic time series analysis are also introduced.

CE 263 Applied River Engineering

Application of fundamental principles of fluid dynamics and open channel flow to the design and retrofit of river-connected infrastructure, including road embankments, road drainage systems, berms, culverts, bridges and impoundments.

CE 265 Ground Water Hydrology

Principles of ground water hydraulics, well characteristics, aquifers, and use of numerical methods to solve ground water flow problems.